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# London Grip New Poetry – Winter 2012

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This issue of London Grip features new poems by:

*Norbert Hirschhorn *Rosemary Norman *Janet Simon *Nancy Mattson *Sultana Raza *Leah Fritz *Murray Bodo *Haris Adhikari *Kerrin P Sharpe *Bruce Christianson
*Paul Richards *Fiona Sinclair *Ken Champion *Mal Grosch *Merryn Williams
*Robert Nisbet *Frankie McMillan *David R Morgan
*Kamran *Adriana Caudrey *Edward Mycue

A printer-friendly version of London Grip New Poetry can be obtained at LG new poetry Winter 2012

Editor’s Introduction

Many of the poems in this issue have gathered themselves round themes of searching and loss. Between Norbert Hirschhorn’s SF-like quest for Jesus across the universe and Edward Mycue trying to find his way through multiple poetic forms, we meet people hunting for physical sustenance or pursuing lost memories and even lost language.

Apart from the Hirschhorn poem and Janet Simon’s oblique reference to the Song of Simeon, however, readers will not easily find the Christmassy feel one might expect from a magazine launched in December. Instead of the Christmas Star guiding the Wise Men we have a group of moon poems, reinforced by Bianca Hendicot’s delightful cover image. So your editor, taking his cue from a handful of street-scene poems, extends Christmas greetings in the voice of an innkeeper with premises on a street in Bethlehem…

Accommodation

Crowds are good for business. Better
working hard than standing idle
with time to think too much.

Crowds are good for business. Spending
is contagious – bring more wine
and roll the dice again.

Not much mirth in these two. What with
her in her condition and him
with eyes for no-one else.

I should send them packing. Ah! but
someone’s bound to see me do it
and then there’ll be a fuss.

Best to give a little. I’ve found
as life goes on there comes a time
for necessary gestures of goodwill.

Michael Bartholomew-Biggs
http://mikeb-b.blogspot.com/

Please send submissions for future issues to poetry@londongrip.co.uk, enclosing no more than three poems and including a brief, 2-3 line, biography. Copyright of all poems remains with the contributors

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Norbert Hirschhorn : Chasing after Jesus, AD 3000

    A rumour from a far planet,
    parsecs and parsecs away –
    Jesus, he heard, had been: born,
    crucified, resurrected, returned.

    Had the Christ abandoned Earth,
    where we insist the mystery first arose?
    Or, to return only once all other corners
    of the cosmos were harrowed?

    So he set out for that remote place.
    Why yes, Jesus was here, aeons ago.

    We too await His return.

    If you find Him, tell how we wait.

    On: Yes, a few years ago…

    and on – Yes! A few months ago…

    Yes! Yesterday…

    Ah, you just missed Him.

    Without regret: in his pilgrimage for grace
    he’d had nothing to lose; now at the close,
    nothing more to gain. And so, humbled, bereft,
    and bare, he landed at last at the remotest place

    any could reach, to find rainbows –
    doubles, trebles, circles, crowns –
    and fragrance and flames.

Norbert Hirschhorn is a physician commended by President Bill Clinton as an ‘American Health Hero.’ He lives in London and Beirut. His poems appear in three full collections. See www.bertzpoet.com

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Rosemary Norman : Sign

When you cannot see this sign the river is underwater – From “The world’s stupidest signs”

     …so he rides a year and a day
    until it’s April
    and he can hope once again

    for a sign, not the jutting
    board or alphabet
    that leapfrogs when he looks

    but sky illegibly at work
    on flat water
    overcome by what it announces.

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Rosemary Norman : For

    For the night window to slant
    above my bed.

    For my dimensions to be what they are
    with the cleanliness of a fossil

    in rock, that is distinct
    but is nevertheless and also rock.

    For a foothold in air, the far
    side of the glass, to admire how I lie.

Rosemary Norman’s second collection, Italics was published by Shoestring Press in autumn 2010. Her work with video artist Stuart Pound is at www.stuartpound.info

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Janet Simon : Nunc Dimittis

Lord, now lettest thy servant depart in peace,
According to thy word:
For mine eyes have seen thy salvation,
Which thou hast prepared before the face of all people;
A light to lighten the Gentiles,
And the glory of thy people Israel.
Song of Simeon Luke 2, 29-32

    Grey again. Thin lipped light
    whispers into the morning.
    Rain slats and it's no warmer.
    Bloodless, in back kitchens
    immigrant women sit at windows.
    Those who have lived here too long
    know it's not even a third
    of the way past winter to spring
    in spite of the date.

    In front rooms their old men argue.
    The rain will not let up.
    Stiff, repetitive, grumbling
    over the same blind quarrels
    in the same grim, gloom,
    they cannot get themselves out.
    There's nowhere else to go.
    Perhaps they are waiting for something,
    for a child, or at least some sun,
    so that they can have done with
    this endless misremembering
    of who said what to whom,
    and why it mattered once.

    It's not that they're tired of living,
    at least it's not that alone.
    One more failure of sunrise
    makes little difference at this stage,
    and a sort of spring will come one day.
    It always does sooner or later,
    however briefly.

    But before the drizzle resettles
    and with it the old disputations,
    they linger, still longing in darkness
    for some total change of weather,
    a new star, a new sky, a new something,
    to give them permission at last
    to depart this place in peace.

Feb 2/ Candlemass/Groundhog Day

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Janet Simon : The Pearl

Matthew xiii

    Inside the space which was my mind
    each writhing cell disintegrates.
    What was a busy gloss
    becomes a flat matt vacuum.
    You ask me questions
    I don't know the answers to.
    I knew them once, but pain
    or pleasure carried them away.
    Knock on this hollow bowl
    and you will hear a fruitless thud.
    Not even echoes of some wisdom
    that I thought I knew
    will ring out after me.
    With this stupidity
    I make a new beginning.

    I have had precious thoughts.
    I called them truth.
    Some were like yours
    and some were different.
    They grew like bubbles,
    multiplied, became strung out,
    coloured and crystallised.
    They made such jewellery
    I wore them on my tongue.
    They almost dazzled me.
    I thought they cut like diamonds,
    lasted like solid stone,
    but they were only fake glass beads.
    Cracked by my straining heart
    they shattered ... easily .

    You say that truth is something
    far too precious to tell every fool
    who asks for it. I say it all depends
    on what you mean by fool.
    There is an irritation underneath
    this emptiness, cloudy and creamy grey.
    Although it promises a gentle sheen,
    as yet, it is not bright.
    It does not tell me things.
    All I remember is that someone, somewhere
    said that where your treasure is
    there will your heart be also.
    I don't recall how heads came into it.

Janet Simon is a native Londoner. A previous runner up in the National Poetry Competition, she has two published collections: Victoria Park and Asylum.

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Leah Fritz : Get Well Ghazal

    My mind is not itself, my heart is dead.
    I don't know how to live these hours without you.

    The days are long just sitting by your bed
    but longer still the nights alone without you.

    I talk to people far away where time
    is earlier, forgetting night without you,

    pretending I see daylight, too, and that I'm
    by your side; not in this bed without you.

    Please come home; I don't know what to do;
    It's selfish but I cannot dream without you.

Since her arrival England in 1985, New York born writer, Leah Fritz, has had four collections of her poems published in Britain. Her latest volume, Whatever Sends the Music into Time: New and Selected Poems, was published by Salmon in 2012.

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Murray Bodo : Joy

    Ever since I was a boy
    And first heard the sweet sough of
    Pine trees at McGaffey Park

    Ever since I was a teen
    And first saw “Colored Only”
    Drinking spouts in St. Louis

    Ever since I was a man
    And first tasted the new words
    Of one who said she loved me

    Ever since my middle years
    And first felt the soft flesh of
    God in a poor wrinkled hand

    Ever since age took hold and
    I first smelled the taste of death
    I’d seen and heard as a boy –

    The feel of pines stirs me
    Flesh smells sweet as roses
    “White Only” tastes of gall

    Love in pain sings no guile
    And Holy Fools are waving
    Guffawing from their coffins

Murray Bodo is a Franciscan Priest who resides in Cincinnati, Ohio. The author of 27 books, including the best selling, Francis: The Journey and the Dream, his poems, stories and articles have appeared in magazines and literary journals. His latest book of poems, Something Like Jasmine, with accompanying CD, was released by Tau Publishing in 2012

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Sultana Raza : The Serpentine

    I absorb the beauty
    but dare not look too closely
    for fear this pretty picture
    might disappear
    if looked at too minutely.

    Were I to sit and stare,
    like these stone goddesses
    who take turns to rule
    over the cycles
    of their flowering boudoir,
    would I still hear
    the meandering of the stream,
    birds commenting
    on this cornucopia of green?

Of Indian origin, Sultana Raza has been living in Europe for many years. Her short stories and poems have been published in Ancient Heart Magazine, India Currents, Szirine, Kindred Spirit, Cygnus Review, Arabesque Review and the Literary Gazette.

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Haris Adhikari : Buried

    A lamp-post
    in the dark
    gleaming
    for no one—

    no one
    was there
    in the dead silence
    of the night—

    the cold
    was too harsh
    and the vision
    blurred in the fog—

    dogs were barking
    far away
    some changing
    of shapes—

    for fear
    perhaps

    I was so thankful
    to the light—
    but soon I realized
    how dark the way was
    stretched
    and buried.

Haris Adhikari is from Nepal. He holds an MA in English and American literature from Tribhuvan University. He is a lecturer of English and edits Misty Mountain Review, an online journal of short poetry. His first poetry anthology, Flowing with a River, was published by The Society of Nepali Writers in English (NWEN). Currently, he is working on That Distant Lane, a chapbook of children’s poetry. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Red Fez Journal, Buddhist Poetry Review, Cyclamens and Swords Publishing, The Citron Review, The Rusty Nail Magazine, Mad Swirl, Red Box Kite, Of Nepalese Clay, The Kathmandu Post, The Enchanting Verses Literary Review, Message in a Bottle, Lyrical Passion Poetry, Essence Poetry & Yes, Poetry.

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Kerrin P Sharpe : it takes the revolution of snow to get the tsar talking

    I am little father
    of the babushka dolls
    olga maria tatania

    lexei anastasia

    at every train station
    I am the old order
    asleep in the icons
    of Russian Orthodox prayer

    I remember my palaces
    as mirrors of candles
    that nourished Russia
    long before darkness

    now all my years
    freeze behind me like knives
    they say blood
    is the comrade of snow

    my bones agree with Windsor
    the haemophilia
    of loss marches well
    beyond the forest

Kerrin P. Sharpe lives in Christchurch, New Zealand where she is a poet and a teacher of creative writing. She has published in NZ, Australia and England. Her first collection Three Days in a Wishing Well, published by Victoria University Press was launched at the Christchurch Writers’ Festival in September 2012.

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Bruce Christianson : Silence Please

    death waits his turn
    at the self-service issue desk
    there is a queue but
    it's a marked improvement
    over when the books were chained

    death returns tuberous begonias

    checks out a tourist guide to bruges
    his next client
    is in the line behind him
    death takes his time & doesn't hurry

Bruce Christianson is a mathematician from Whangarei, New Zealand, who moved to Hertfordshire twenty-five years ago. He lives with death in an open relationship

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Paul Richards : Studying in a foreign land

    On station concourse
    Shoe shine guy between shoe shines
    Reads dictionary

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Paul Richards : The Interlopers

    Forever
    Neither here
    Nor there
    Blocking utterly the doorway
    Of a pokey bookshop
    On a summer Saturday morning
    Densely packed in winter coat
    Pondering the latest PD James

    Or just captured in the monochrome shades
    Of a family photograph
    Leaning off-centre on the edge of a sideboard
    All but obscured
    By a magisterial uncle

    They always need a lift to some station
    In the back of beyond
    And their plastic bags know no bounds
     - It’s a toss-up
    Whose car they’ll squeeze in to
    And whether their train
    Runs on a Sunday or not

    Then when they start on the fags again
    Having sworn blind
    They’d really packed it in this time
    And end up calling you
    In wheezing despair
    From the ashen plastic chair
    Of a heaving waiting room
    We can but mutter
    To our significant other
    - Hand muffling receiver -
    “He’s his own worst enemy”

    Contact denied
    Denied contact
    In the dead of night
    They shuffle down to the garden borders
    Barely described by the party lights
    Tracing the territory
    We forget or fear to explore
     - Sniffer dogs
    Put out to grass

    They ache by the sides of rivers
    And zigzag
    Down hotel corridors
    In search of their rooms

    Forever
    Filling uneasily,
    The holes in our prayers.

Paul Richards, reached his half-century this year, and – apart from writing poetry (and playing the piano) – runs his own computer support business. Although very much a North London homeboy he now finds himself residing in South-West London and is loving it, particularly the green and posh bits. His first “proper” poem, written at the age of 9, was a rendition of the nativity in Tim Rice style pop lyrics.

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Fiona Sinclair : Mother’s girl

    Leaving a litter of lies behind him,
    my father would siphon petrol from a neighbour’s car
    like sucking venom from  snake bite,
    and disappear in his mini pick -up
    into the orchards and fields that were his office.

    Mother was determined to expel
    the sins of my father from me:
    when caught stealing chocolate biscuits
    I received slaps like wasps stings;
    detected lying about lost PE kit
    I was invisible for the rest of the day.

    But when cancer caged my father;
    she and I kept vigil either side of his cadaverous body,
    praying he would give up.
    After his death, a nightly tap on my bedroom door,
    “Can I sleep in here tonight?”

    And when she brushed my childhood aside
    to explain the facts of our life –
    the ramshackle house un-saleable
    after father’s cut-and-shut renovations,
    savings that rattled like a near-empty piggy bank –
    I inwardly strutted with pride.

Fiona Sinclair’s work has appeared in numerous magazines. Her second pamphlet A Game of Hide and Seek was published by Indigo Dreams in 2012. She is the editor of the on line poetry magazine Message in a Bottle

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Nancy Mattson : An Old

    Once upon
    he was my
    charming, his black
    kind. When I opened
    I couldn’t speak, my
    heavy. When he drew
    came pouring in, every
    covered in thick
    I blinked
    forced out weak
    moved my
    slow and stiff. His careful
    under my
    across the wide
    I think, recognised
    one by one
    but what to call
    how to ask
    gone, a hundred
    I needed
    my dry
    my empty

    Still, I draw with
    I want
    I paint every
    as always

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Nancy Mattson : Ode To A 1953 Buick Skylark

    sleeker than apples
          your chrome
    brighter than brilliantine
          your paint
    rounder than vowels
          your wheels
    quicker than Grace’s
         cricket ball
    yet your motor purrs
         more sweetly
    than honeybees heading home
         from lavender

Nancy Mattson moved from the Canadian prairies to London, England, in 1990. She has three full-length poetry collections: Finns and Amazons (Arrowhead Press, 2012), Writing with Mercury (Flambard Press, 2006) and Maria Breaks Her Silence (Coteau Books, 1989).

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Ken Champion : Street Games

    Flinging the ball at the pennies – tanners if you’re flush –
    on the paving slab against the end house wall, and mum
    shouting down the street for your tea, and you run past

    the parlour to the kitchen, stir the washing in the boiler
    with the bleached broom handle while she salts greens,
    squeal of fork inside a saucepan, hand wiping a brow;

    and you want to run to the park through the sandpit,
    round the bandstand, on to the Flats, jump the stream
    between houses, lean on a fluted lamppost and sate

    yourself on mind flicks of skinny Iris at number two
    or the misty silken space inside the thighs of principal
    boys your dad takes you to see at Lyceum pantos,

    but knowing you’re only going to the coins again
    that no-one ever seems to hit.

Ken Champion is an Internationally published poet and writer whose work has appeared in many magazines. He has two pamphlets and a collection, But Black And White Is Better (Tall Lighthouse, 2008, reprinted 2010); and his fiction has been published in literary journals in the UK and USA.

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Mal Grosch : Villiers Street

    Villiers Street’s seen better days –
    Beneath the footbridge, grubby, lays
    Twin claims: as part of Tourist Land
    And a dustbin for the Strand.

    A pub too proud to just sell ale
    Must boast it’s on the ‘Dickens trail’
    A plaque says Kipling once lived here;
    Subtract the dates: yes, for three years.

    I take myself around the corner
    With cash from my guitar – I pawned her.
    I meander on and by some ploy
    Reach the Coal Hole by Savoy
    Then my poor soul, still bruised by failure
    Receives the balm of Timothy Taylors
    A genuine pub with genuine beer:
    Mal Grosch, they’ll say, he once drank here!

Mal Grosch (malgrosch@london.com) is a poet based in East London at Victoria Park. He has just completed an anthology called The Surrey Hills. All his poems are available as ebooks. He is also a musician and folk dance caller.

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Merryn Williams : Gissing’s Streets

    I lost my chance that day in the students’ cloakroom,
    a grey morning, thick dust on the radiator.
    So many times they’ve asked me, why did you do it?
    I am good with words, but can’t explain.

    I remember how I slid my hand
    into the pockets of my fellow students,
    I thought I could hide behind those heavy coats,
    shield myself from the January weather.

    I lost so many things that day: the isles of Greece,
    Oxford, the Senior Common Room,
    civilised discussions of the Latin poets
    of the Silver Age, over sherry.

    Do I spend my last few coins on that second-hand book
    which I covet, or buy a sandwich?
    There’s grit on this wind.  Here’s your erstwhile star pupil,
    draped round his neck, his curriculum vitae.

George Gissing was expelled from Owens College, Manchester for stealing money from other students, in order to keep a girl he had fallen in love with, off the streets.

Merryn Williams’ latest book is Effie: A Victorian Scandal: From Ruskin’s Wife to Millais’ Muse .

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Robert Nisbet : A Study in Scarlet Women

    That’s all they’ll do, they’ll flirt, wink, tart themselves up
    it’ll be boys, boys, boys

    Nowadays it’s little groups on mobile phones
    one time it was phone boxes
    another time Conti’s juke box
    and they’d flirt, wink, tart

    The same in the assembly rooms, say 1815-ish
    they’d arrive in carriages, with Mama
    flirt, wink, tart themselves up (much easier with fans)

    Likewise, temperance halls, the picture palaces
    Sunday schools, band of hope
    dame schools, grammar schools
    it was all boys, boys, boys

    Must have been bloody wearing
    for the senior mistresses, prefects, counsellors
    the Mamas in the assembly rooms
    the Sunday school teachers

    It was all boys, boys, boys
    and all for Elvis lookalikes
    Fitzwilliam Haughty
    Roy of the Rovers, the curate
    Jason

    So after all that counselling
    (bad buggers, those boys, boys, boys)
    it would be back to the staff room
    stiffish whiskies, loosen tights
    report back to the Head, the Beak
    the counsellor-in-chief, the chief exec
    and
            oh surely not
                                flirt, wink, tart?

Robert Nisbet published 100 short stories between 1973 and 2006, and his work will feature in the forthcoming Library of Wales anthology of the Welsh short story, 1900-2010 (Parthian, 2013). Poems he’s written more recently have appeared in Smiths Knoll, Orbis, Other Poetry, The Interpreter’s House and other magazines

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Frankie McMillan : Meeting the train with a wheelbarrow

    I soon learn to speak like my sister
    a foreign accent (a touch of Russian)
    and much hand waving

    she shows me the shop in the courtyard
    where the boys buy their smokes, shows me
    a ball room for Friday night dances

    they wouldn’t mind, she says, if I stayed
    I could do the twist with her

    she shows me a room of sewing machines
    half made baskets of cane
    there are lots of men who love her, she says

    the doctor and her plan to run away
    they’re thinking of Hawaii
    once she stops smoking

    I soon learn to speak like my sister
    foreign accent, much hand waving
    she meets me in the courtyard

    the boys jostle under the hanging tree
    their dark eyes never leave her
    they wouldn’t mind if I stayed

    I could do the twist, some of the boys
    were actually quite handsome

Frankie McMillan is a short story writer and poet from New Zealand. She is the author of The Bag Lady’s Picnic and other stories and a poetry collection, Dressing for the Cannibals. Recent poetry has appeared in Turbine, Sport, JAAM, Snorkel, Trout, The Cincinnati Review and Shenandoah.

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David R Morgan : Le Dejeuner Sur l’ herbe

    The teacher wants to join the ghosts of his parents,
    fluid colours on grass, picnicking in his mind –
    but the door of the past is too brittle to open,
    conflicting with the Monet print here, when the lights
    in the classroom dim and he
    sits on a corner stool and reads
    in the paper about that girl gone missing, lost ten long days.
    There’s a door locked that won’t let her through.

    Murdered? Fled? The teacher thinks
    of his own daughter grown so
    away from him now, lost in another reality
    where her husband, the salesman,
    shifts laptops and Kindles in Luton’s Mall;
    and of her daughter, too awkward
    to eat her lunch properly, too autistic to account
    for herself beyond the prison of personal space.

    His smile half regret, half reproach,
    he puts down the paper, strolls his classroom
    over to where, in the shadowy light,
    the Monet releases its subtleties, seeming
    to mirror back the eye’s own searching
    Into what? Not re-assessment,
    but something better, softer, some set
    matrix of located colour, which opening all doors
    invites the lost ones back, to luncheon on the lawn.

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David R Morgan : The Moon was huge

    The Moon
    was huge, as he had said
    it would be. It sat

    cleanly on his wheelbarrow,
    and filled the wild fields
    with reflected light.

    Because he had said it would be
    beautiful, it was.
    Or because it was beautiful,

    he said it would be.
    I was aware of him
    behind me, in the twilight,

    and in the night in front;
    and above me in the sky, filling
    all things.

    I froze
    when his shadow fell across the page,
    I was writing this on.

David R Morgan has been an arts worker, literature officer, festival organiser and writer-in-residence for education authorities, Littlehay Prison and Fairfield Psychiatric Hospital. He has had two plays screened on ITV and his poems have been widely published. His latest collections are Beneath The Dreaming Tree (Poetry Space Ltd 2011) and Lightbulbs In The Sea (Knives, Forks & Spoons Press 2011). He has also written many books for children.

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Kamran : The White Bread

A translation from the Urdu by the author with Roshan Ara Dilber & MBB

    There was once a family down in the slums
    living off garbage and eating from dumps.
    They’d never seen a three-course meal:
    too poor to buy one– but too proud to steal.

    One moonlit evening their excited small son
    saw something amazing.  He came at a run
    to look for his mother; and when he’d called her
    along narrow alleys and pathways he hauled her.

    Holding tight to her hand, the little boy said
    "Look mother, I’ve got you some lovely white bread.
    Call brother and sister, we'll each have a bite –
    no sleeping on empty stomachs tonight!”

    At this, the boy’s mother burst into tears.
    She knew what he’d seen was only a clear
    full-moon reflection on his metal plate.
    A loaf of white bread wasn’t part of their fate.

    Kissing him gently on his puzzled head,
    "Hold it to up your face" the boy’s mother said,
    "This is how life is."  This truth that she told
    taught him the lesson that truth can be cold.

    Yet although he heard he did not understand
    till he turned the plate over onto his hand,
    shook his head, dropped his eyes and with hope turned to stone
    set out with his mother, still hungry, for home.

Kamran hails from Andaman, India and is an avid reader and writer of English, Urdu, Hindi and Bengali literature. He has published many articles, essays and poems in different languages. He is currently pursuing a degree in civil engineering

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Adriana Caudrey : Moon

     … of many faces,
    pale mother,
    anxious child,
    glow ball in night sky.

    Once a month you are perfect whole,
    shedding light from your womb.

    They say you are pock-marked
    with imperfections.
    Your only fault is when you are
    eaten away with jealousy –
    a tiny bite out of your side.

    So we would be perfect,
    if whole and  rounded,
    like the moon full.

    We are damaged children’s faces
    and our task to find the child
    undamaged;
    ingenuous and full,
    through having stared for years
    from the dark sky of the soul.

    The full moon is rich and giving,
    shedding a beam so strong
    at midnight,
    that it stripes with brilliant light
    and shadow, all the country lanes.

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Adriana Caudrey : The Cat

    The Cat has wisdom
    of unrestrained expression,
    passing through padded paws,
    purring harmoniously,
    his legs like hands in gloves,
    or the dancer’s continual mime,
    stroke the air,
    sending its waves
    in spirals caressing.

    The Dancer, the Singer,
    the Rain-maker,
    have woven a circle about them
    of music that flows from within;
    the Dancer fashions
    his pattern about him
    with every movement he makes
    like a ribbon or a sparkler
    that slices or lightens the air.

    The Conductor waving this baton
    entrances the entire concert hall,
    the lonely child by the coast
    shifting the shingle
    and wetting the dusky pebbles,
    always stooping, gathering relics,
    in a language he must decipher –
    though a shock of coral
    will call without a name.

    He stores his finds
    shoring the Castle from waves,
    till time when coral can be strung,
    the notes can be sung,
    the man is the mime,
    and reaches out a hand
    to reach another hand
    to form a line,
    to dance.

Adriana Caudrey read English at Oxford having won a scholarship to St Hughes. From 1979 she was a journalist with a special interest in health and education and was frequently read in the national press. Two years running she won the young woman journalist of the year award. From her teenage years and throughout this time she quietly wrote poetry. Adriana ceased her journalism once her first child was born but continued with her poetry. Sadly she died in 2005.

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***

Edward Mycue : Word Kittens Are Echoing

    By now so many movements and -isms
    Have blown through my word kitchen
    That the kitten in my mind’s corner,
    In the basket under the old gas stove,

    Is bouncing from surreal- to symbolism
    Now the post avant garde is a canker
    Maybe I mean a cantankerous jungle-
    Jingler with yens for villanelles and rime

    Or maybe rondos with deep koans inside.
    Once I had a dream that I’d memorized
    A lot of sacred books from the Koran,
    Bible, old & new, the Book of the Dead,

    Kalevala, I Ching (if it is a sacred book).
    It all came to seem like hitting speed-bumps
    That smelled of another pheromone breakdown.
    Life is a riddle leaving paw-prints on parchment

Edward Mycue lives in San Francisco and is the author of many books – most recently: Mindwalking, New and Selected Poems (2008) and Song of San Francisco (2012) published in the U.K. by Spectacular Diseases Press

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#### 1 Comment

1. Adarsh
   07/01/2013 @ 10:54

   Its great to see such a talented and extraordinary poet like Kamran to be a part of London Grip. He’s mesmerizing at what he does. I have been of his writings for long. His poetry is the truth Hats off to his poetry!